Hans van Baalen MEP (VVD, The Netherlands) has been elected as the new President of the ALDE Party at the ALDE Party Congress in Budapest. The newly elected Vice-Presidents are: Timmy Dooley TD, Fredrick Federley MEP, Ilhan Kyuchyuk MEP, Markus Löning, Marta Pascal MP and Baroness Ros Scott.

On Friday 20 November former ALDE Party President Sir Graham Watson officially opened the 36th ALDE Party Congress in Budapest, Hungary. Other speakers include Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, Deputy Prime Minister Andrej Babis and Zsuzsanna Szelenyi MP from Eguytt. Guy Verhofstadt offered a report from the EP.

At the 2015 ALDE Party Congress in Budapest, delegates adopted policy resolutions on a range of important and topical matters, such as terrorism, refugee crisis, climate change, TTIP or EU reaction to the situation in Iraq, Syria and Ukraine.

Liberalisok from Hungary and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats Party from Romania become ALDE Party member parties at the ALDE Party Council meeting on Thursday 19 November in Budapest, Hungary. Congratulations and welcome to Liberalisok and ALDE Romania!

On Saturday, the ALDE Party Congress assembled in Hungary’s capital Budapest took a major step in the development of democracy at the European level. Julie Cantalou commented: ‘The experiment of introducing individual membership in ALDE Party has exceeded all expectations.’

Responding to a growing demand to hear the voice of liberal mayors on matters of European relevance, the President of the ALDE Group in the European Committee of the Regions, Bas Verkerk, convened a meeting of mayors during the ALDE Party Congress to discuss migration, refugees and integration.

Ahead of next week’s Danish referendum on their EU opt-out, around 1,500 participants gathered in Herning for Venstre’s annual Congress. The core focus was on how to solve Denmark’s challenges for the future. The Congress was the first after the general elections.

From Friday 20 to Sunday 22 November 2015 the formerly called Folkpartiet in Sweden hosted its annual Congress in Stockholm. The main highlight from the Congress is that Folkpartiet renames itself as Liberalerna (The Liberals in Swedish).

President of ALDE Party, Hans van Baalen MEP states: ”ALDE Party congratulates our Lithuanian liberal member parties for their hard work and successes to date, and we are confident that they will continue to be successful in promoting the liberal values so needed for Lithuania and the rest of Europe.’

Under the title ‘Hands on: How can Liberals unite?’, the ALDE Party and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FNF) Europe will host a Liberal Breakfast on Wednesday 9 December 2015 with the new ALDE Party President Hans van Baalen MEP.